My thoughts, ramblings, reviews, critiques, cracks, opinions, jokes, quotes, rhymes, rhythms, songs, sorrows, poetry, prayers and other musings on life in this postmodern existence of ours in these United States of America.

I have never had a drink at the Employee’s Only Bar in New York, but I have read about and talked to those who have, and I hear only good things. Employee’s Only appears to be one of the new wave of cocktail bars truly dedicated to not just respecting the cherished history of the cocktail but also moving things forward and I think that is evident in their cocktail recipe book “Speakeasy”.

I say that they look to the past and the future because of the way they have structured the book. Going through the pages you will find recipes for classic cocktails such as the Manhattan, Martinez, Sidecar, and Negroni and on the following page you will find an Employee’s Only version that either ups the complexity or takes the drink in an exciting new direction. So not only do you get the great classic recipes, but you also get a new version to try or even inspire your own experiments.

Most recipes do refer to the spirit ingredients by brand name, but almost all of the brand names mentioned are fairly easy to find. In the re-invented cocktails there is the healthy use of homemade or infused ingredients, thankfully there is an appendix in the back of the book with directions for the production of such ingredients.

So while making some of these cocktails may require a bit of work to get the required ingredients together or produced I have found that I am almost always rewarded by something complex, tasty, and smooth.

In conclusion I guess I would say that if you are a serious drinker and you like real cocktails and you are willing to work for them then this is a great book for you. Produced by people whom I would consider true mixologists, this book gives you an idea on how they think and approach their craft by adjusting classic recipes and creating new ones. I have enjoyed this book and I hope you will too.

I was really looking forward to this book “A Taste For Absinthe, 65 Recipes for Classic & Contemporary Cocktails” by R. Winston Guthrie with James F. Thompson; but this book didn’t really knock my socks off, but was still a solid effort. Allow me to elaborate:

I found the Absinthe Buying Guide to be a bit inadequate, while they do list 18 different absinthes; there were some omissions that surprised me (La Muse Verte, St. George, etc.). And instead of giving recommendations (As I would think a buying guide should) instead you are given a website, the name of importer, style, ABV, distillery name, a vague price indicator and a short description. For what was described as a buying guide, I was a bit disappointed.

Overall when looking at all the recipes in the book I have neither great praise nor complaint. The recipes vary from relatively simple to complex. In the ingredient lists for most recipes the products are called for by name brand name. Normally I wouldn’t consider this a big deal, but when your average bottle of absinthe runs from $45 to $85 it seems a little silly. There are several recipes however that just call for just absinthe or blanche absinthe.

I am however happy to report that the majority of the recipes were new to me, of course I was familiar to most of the classic recipes listed in the same named section. So if you are looking for a good collection of new absinthe related cocktail recipes then this book may work out for you. Also peppered throughout the book are one page “A Moment In Absinthe History” essays. I found these to be sometimes interesting little snippets of absinthe history that I may or may not have already known.

The absinthe primer at the beginning of the book is probably the best conceived and executed section of the book. While very little of the information was new to me, I felt it was a well-organized and well laid out introduction to the spirit. I would easily recommend reading this section for anyone who wanted to learn the basics about absinthe and its production and range or types.

So to conclude, while I would not considered this a new classic cocktail book is still a very solid effort towards collecting and compiling the best of the absinthe related recipes out there right now. For a non-absinthe fan you would probably want to skip this book, but if you have a passion of love for the green fairy then this belongs on your bookshelf.

In this book journalist Max Watman takes you all around the world of American distilling and moonshining. We learn of his own (Mis)adventures in fermenting and distilling in his kitchen and basement. We learn the history of distilling and in our nation’s past, and we get an overview of the major events that shaped alcohol production in the country (Whiskey Rebellion, Prohibition, Etc.). We also get a tour of many of the new startup micro-distillers that have began around the country. Finally Max takes you on a great tour of moonshining in Virginia, South Carolina and much of the rest of the South and even visits with the law enforcement officers who are charged with shutting it down.

The topics are not all in this order; rather the author tends to jump around from subject to subject as he changes chapters. His writing about his own experience making moonshine, visiting micro-distillers and moonshiners is quite interesting and I as a reader was able to connect with the people he was interviewing and talking about. However his leaps into American moonshining and distilling history were far too chaotic for me to follow, characters came and went so fast that by the end of a chapter I felt like I didn’t learn too much and it all spread by in a blur.

Other than the occasional falter when he ventures into history, Watman does a great job telling you about real people who practice this art of distilling spirits, both legally and illegally. And as far as books go on the subject, his is one of the freshest and is obviously one of the most current, so despite its faults I recommend the book if this subject interests you at all.